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Conference on Social Media Communication and Right-Wing Populisms in Latin America and Beyond

Recruiting Post-doc Fellows for the Centre for the Politics of Feelings

New study maps moral language on US presidential primary campaigns

Our vision

The Centre, housed at Senate House in Bloomsbury, at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, was created in September 2021.

The Centre for the Politics of Feelings is devoted to the interdisciplinary understanding of how emotions and feelings can be active causes but also targets of political behaviour in diverse socio-political contexts.

The Centre addresses from a multi-disciplinary perspective, how affect and emotions and their underlying neurophysiological mechanisms shape political behaviour in intricate couplings with rationality, as well as how politics shapes and exploits affect and emotions. The Centre represents a focused, timely and multidisciplinary endeavour to give a new answer to an age-old question:

What does it mean to be a political animal in the 21st century of 'emo-cratic' politics, alternative facts, social media, precarious health and populism?

The longer-term aim is for this academic Centre to become a world-leading hub for the continuing understanding of how reason and social passions, in their inextricable symbiosis, define our political engagement with the social world.

The Centre for the Politics of Feelings, funded by the NOMIS Foundation, is a partnership between the School of Advanced Study , the Warburg Institute and the Institute of Philosophy ,at University of London and the Department of Psychology at Royal Holloway University of London, and is directed by Professor Manos Tsakiris.

Latest Publications

How does Affective Polarisation Feel? A Comparative Description

Affective polarization has become a central concept to explain how citizens think and behave in Western democracies. However, while research has made great progress studying the causes, consequences, and remedies of this concept, we know surprisingly little about how affective polarization actually feels. This research note contributes to recent efforts to characterize affective polarization with specific emotions. Drawing on cross-sectional data from five European countries (Denmark, Germany, Italy, Poland, and the United Kingdom; total N = 4,794), we analyze which emotions respondents report to experience toward in-party and out-party voters and which of these emotions correlate with affective polarization scores. While we find that only a few respondents report negative emotions toward in-party voters, they feel moderate amounts of hope, enthusiasm, and pride without being exuberant. Fear-related emotions toward out-party voters are rare, and while one in five respondents experiences extreme anger, disappointment, or disgust toward opponents, up to 50% experience these emotions just slightly or not at all. The emotions most consistently related to affective polarization are positive emotions toward in-party voters and – to a lesser extent – aversion, hate, and disgust toward opponents. We describe patterns across countries and demographic backgrounds and highlight a practical implication: affective polarization feels more positive than what prevailing notions of ‘fear and loathing’ let believe.

Lawall, K., Versteegen, P. L., & Tsakiris, M. (2026). How does affective polarization feel? A comparative description. European Journal of Political Research, 1–15. doi:10.1017/S1475676526101170